About:
A range of stakeholders discuss what they see as the benefits of conducting MyScience investigations.
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MusicTeacher: I found MyScience to be a very good program.
It threw me into Science full stop.It made me teach Science in a completely new way.I say prior to MyScience I was teaching a rather limited a range of Science,if any and that was through you know the stuff that was eithergiven to us through our unit's of work or justother independent sort of experiments.But it's given me a huge appreciation for teaching of Sciencein schools and I can see a difference between my kids' analysisand my kids being able to be more confidentin giving their own investigation than classes who are doing 'Science'and not really doing an investigation as such,it's just more of a recipe based Science.So, I'm all for it, I think it's a fantastic programand I would recommend it.Mentor: I think by introducing Science in primary school is half the effort.
When I was in primary school I barely remember doing anything like this.You know, you sort of got introduced to 'What is the planets?'And you know certain little things like that but to actually be ableto do experiments, it's quite interesting and exciting,it makes the kids see that Science isn't just boring you knowout of a textbook sort of stuff.So, it just brings home that reality that it doesn't have to be boringand that it's all around us.So, letting them know where you know that there's Science in Cokeand you know little things like that and even looking at yourdishwashing detergent just seeing how you can explore different thingsin everyday life, it just makes things interestingand you can relate to it, so.Assistant Principal: I guess like me to be explaining to people
that it's not as big a deal as what it seemed to me when I was doing itlast year, it seemed much more complex than I think it really needed to be,it could be simplified.But I still think it's a really good thing for teachers,to train teachers how to teach Science and I think once you've doneMyScience you'll never teach Science the same way as you did before.It will become a priority for you and you know that for your classthen all of your students know how to conduct a scientific investigationand they know what's important about fair testing.That makes them good consumers even if it's not to do with school,they see an ad on the television they'll know 'No, that's not right'.They hear about some survey they think 'No, that doesn't prove it at all'.And things even like where someone says 'Oh well, my Dad smokes and hedidn't die so therefore smoking is not bad'.They'll understand that is not a valid thing to say.Principal: MyScience gave us an opportunity, a learning opportunity
and I think the thing that impressed me was it was so well organisedand also that the support was there.The idea of bringing mentors into the school and so on,it just seemed to be very well organised and an opportunity to putScience back on the main agenda.So, we were just very impressed with the way it was presented.I think it's been important to have that really special focus to makesomething special means that people lift in their enthusiasm,the students lift and I think just that sort of concentrated focuson Science has been the thing that's changed it.But I also must give a recognition to my staff,it's not something that I can just push on my own,it's something that I say 'Here's an opportunity for us'.And each year we've done it two or three or four teachershave put their hand up to say 'Yep, we'll take thisopportunity for the kids'.And every year we've just had a good program running.Well, I think it's raised the profile of Science in the school.I was actually mentoring one of the groups and they've already picked upsome of the language of Science, you know and I'd say to them you know'What are you keeping the same ...?''Oh yes we know you've got to keep this and that the same,you only change one thing'.So, they're starting to think like young scientistsand use the language of Science.So, I think it's changed their outlook and I think they'll takethat away with them into the future, that scientific methodand they really do start to understand it at even such a young age.Parent: I think Caitlyn's learned a lot of scientific method
and investigation processes.Just thinking about what they're trying to prove or disproveand then figuring out how they can actually do that and focusing onfair testing and I think that's a big part of it for children is thatthey want to change this and they want to change that.But getting them to understand that you really have to focus on you knowchanging as little as possible and making sure that you conduct a fair test.And I think she's learned a lot about that.Notes:
While the effort of participating in MyScience is acknowledged, the benefits described are immense.